Nibble on bird’s-foot trefoil, a plant in the pea family, and you’ll get a mouthful of poisonous cyanide, which dissuades most grazers. A caterpillar known to safely munch on the plant can make cyanide of its own, having independently evolved the same instructions and cellular machinery that the plant uses, scientists now show.
Credit: Martin Olsson/Wikimedia Commons
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